Saturday, December 1, 2012

Microsoft has just launched Windows 8 operating system recently, and is now given an offer for existing Windows users to upgrade to Windows 8 Professional at the price of US$39.99 (download from Internet) or US$69.99 (purchase the DVD media). This offer period is until end of January 2013.

I have just gone to this website of Microsoft to download the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant tool to check if it's worth for my computer to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro by accceting this US$33.99 offer.

On that website, just click on the "Download Pro for $39.99 ERP" button to download the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant for free. Don't worry, there will be a few steps to go through before you actually need to pay the money and get the Windows 8 Pro. You can just run the assessment with the tool first without need to pay anything.

The assessment result for my PC seems to be quite discouraging.

I am informed that:

There will be no DVD player software in Windows 8 Pro. You will need to either install a 3rd party DVD player application or to buy Windows Media Center at a separate price.

Sidebar gadgets are not supported in Windows 8. This seems to be a bad news for AddGadgets.com who produced nice gadgets such as All CPU Meter, Network Meter, Drives Meter, GPU Meter, etc.

Windows Media Center that is included in Windows 7 Home Premium and above, need to be purchased separately for Windows 8 at US$9.99. I heard that Microsoft is offering this for free download to Windows 8 Pro now until end of January 2013.